Do SSRIs ever have *lasting* ill effects, even after stopping taking?

[Wombat140]

Thanks! Have e-mailed Genomind to see if it's available to UK customers.

 

Nancy, afraid your psychs are talking nonsense, weight gain is a known thing with SSRIs, that I do know just from looking up the drug leaflets. Paroxetine (Paxil) seems to be considered much the worst offender; a neurologist I once went to see said that if I did end up taking SSRIs, he wouldn't prescribe Paxil to a young patient because of the weight gain. It's known to happen sometimes with the others though, but Prozac is supposed to be unusual in that it more often causes weight LOSS.

 

An Internet friend of mine says that she's hungry all the time when she's on SSRIs, so maybe it is a direct effect on metabolism.

Edited June 8, 2015 by Wombat140

[MomWithOCDSon]

Yep Wombat, we'd both heard and read that about some SSRIs, but supposedly neither Lexapro nor Zoloft were on the list of "weight offenders."

 

With a teenage boy, it can be really difficult to tell what's atypical "hungry" and what's standard . . . most teenage boys I know eat like horses! In DS's case, though, it doesn't appear to burn off as readily. Admittedly, he may have some genetics to account for some of that.

 

What strikes me as I look back in journals, though, is how, before SSRI's, he was almost always "revved up" about something . . . lots of jumping, pacing, etc. So certainly he was burning calories at a fairly rapid rate at that time. The lesser anxiety and "itchiness" in terms of need to move he seems to have these days, I would think, would contribute to a slower burn metabolism-wise.

 

Whatever the case, for him, at this point in his life, it's a worthwhile trade-off.

[EAMom]

Sorry! I meant to also post this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12090838/ it was only 1 small study...I'm guessing it was not repeated on bc pharma doesn't want that info out there

[Wombat140]

Well, I certainly can't see any of the major drug companies funding replications, I think each one has an SSRI of its own at the moment. And it's surprising (and rather shocking) how much of research funding DOES seem to involve them; some studies are directly done by them, in-house, but then there are all the researchers who are supposedly working on their own but their academic fellowship is somehow part-funded by a drug company so they daren't upset them; and then even if a researcher isn't funded by a drug company at the time, they may do work for them at other times, so they can't upset them too much or they'll never get a contract for them again. Doesn't leave many.

 

 

By the way, jsut wanted to let people know that I e-mailed Genomind but apparently they can't ship outside the US because regulations. So it'll have to be 23andMe - I don't know how 23andMe get round these regulations! The annoying thing about that is that 23andMe say you may have to wait several weeks to get your results. (I don't know why, when it's all supposed to be automated and Genomind offer results within 3-5 day!) Can anyone tell me whether it does usually take that long, or whether they're just covering themselves?